This Co-Founder of a $380 Billion AI Company Studied Literature in College — And She Has ‘Zero Regrets’
Here’s why Daniela Amodei thinks degrees in the humanities will become “more important” amid the AI boom.
Key Takeaways
- Daniela Amodei is the co-founder and president of Anthropic, a $380 billion AI company.
- In a recent interview, Amodei defended her English Literature degree and said that as AI improves at science, technology and engineering tasks, humanities degrees will become “more important.”
- Anthropic’s hiring favors strong communication, people skills, kindness and a desire to help others, not just technical credentials, she explained.
Anthropic co-founder and president Daniela Amodei is betting that in an AI-saturated world, the most durable edge won’t come from writing code, but from understanding people, history and ideas.
Amodei, who studied English Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz for undergrad, told ABC News that she has “zero regrets” about skipping a technical degree even as Anthropic’s valuation has soared to $380 billion. In her view, large language models are already so strong at many science, technology and engineering tasks that the relative value of human strengths, like interpretation, ethics and judgement, increases.
“In a world where AI is very smart and capable of doing so many things, the things that make us human will become much more important,” Amodei told ABC News, pointing to understanding ourselves, our history and “what makes us tick” as core capabilities.
Amodei further stated that humanities training sharpens critical thinking skills, the ability to wrestle with ambiguity and skills in reading and argument. These skills as a whole translate directly into designing and governing AI systems for real people.
“I think the ability to have critical thinking skills and learn to interact with people will be more important in the future, rather than less,” Amodei said.
Inside Anthropic, Amodei says hiring already reflects this shift towards the humanities. The company prizes communication skills, good people skills, kindness and a genuine desire to help others, not just raw technical prowess.
“At the end of the day, people still really like interacting with people,” Amodei said. “In an ideal world, AI will complement those skills.”
Gen Z is pivoting away from computer science
Amodei’s comments tie into a broader trend: At the undergraduate level, fewer college students are choosing to major in computer science. Across the University of California system, computer science enrollment fell by 3% in 2024 and another 6% last year, marking the first sustained drop since the dot‑com bust, even as overall college enrollment rose by 2% nationally. A survey from the Computing Research Association found that 62% of computing programs reported declines in undergraduate enrollment this fall.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who majored in computer science in undergrad, recently told Stanford University engineering students that they should not make academic choices solely out of fear that AI will replace certain kinds of work. In contrast to Amodei’s advice, Brin cautioned against switching to comparative literature as a major just because AI is getting better at coding. “The AI is probably even better at comparative literature, just to be perfectly honest anyway,” he said.
Another tech titan, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, graduated from Oregon State University in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. He said last year that if he had to do undergrad over again, he would have “probably chosen more of the physical sciences,” like physics, earth science and chemistry, over “the software sciences,” like computer science.
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Key Takeaways
- Daniela Amodei is the co-founder and president of Anthropic, a $380 billion AI company.
- In a recent interview, Amodei defended her English Literature degree and said that as AI improves at science, technology and engineering tasks, humanities degrees will become “more important.”
- Anthropic’s hiring favors strong communication, people skills, kindness and a desire to help others, not just technical credentials, she explained.
Anthropic co-founder and president Daniela Amodei is betting that in an AI-saturated world, the most durable edge won’t come from writing code, but from understanding people, history and ideas.
Amodei, who studied English Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz for undergrad, told ABC News that she has “zero regrets” about skipping a technical degree even as Anthropic’s valuation has soared to $380 billion. In her view, large language models are already so strong at many science, technology and engineering tasks that the relative value of human strengths, like interpretation, ethics and judgement, increases.
